Issue 10.13
There were almost always 36 bombers from our group that took off together to fly a mission into Germany. When it was a maximum effort day; then all four squadrons in the group would each put up 12 bombers for a total of 48. Taking off in 30 second intervals in the pre dawn darkness, and in clouds forming up into our defensive box formations was a challenge and all too often there would be a terrific explosion and then the formation would be two bombers and 18 men short. If it was a day that our squadron did not fly, we would do what the ground crews did. We went down to the flight line and counted the planes back in. There was a lapse between the time the crews landed, cleaned guns and put all flying equipment into place, then went to interrogation where each crewmembers received his shot of American whisky, ate super if he wasn’t too tired to eat and then back to the barracks. That gave the supply people time to come into the barracks and pickup the missing persons foot locker full of personal things before the rest got there. The night before our first mission, we were awakened by one gunner screaming “If we are going to do one more “360” I’m going to bail out” A360 meaning the group didn’t drop bombs on the first run so they had to go around and go on a second bomb run and all that flak again. The ground pounder woke us up at three AM for our first mission. He said breakfast at four and briefing at five. Oh boy I would get a bacon and eggs breakfast instead of mush or S0S. We all shaved closely. It had to be a close shave so the tight oxygen mast would fit and not leak. If it was not a close shave, that oxygen mask would be cruel after a few or maybe ten hours. That breakfast was great for the first couple of missions but then I could not eat any more breakfast than a cup of coffee or else it would all come back up before take off time. About this time we really learned to sweat out a mission. We usually knew if our squadron was scheduled to fly the next morning. We often played cards in the evening. We would take turns going outside to check on the weather because weather information was classified information so we had to see for our selves. We would take turns going down to the flight line to see how many and what type of bombs the armors were loading and how much gasoline, machine gun ammunition and oxygen were being loaded. This would give us some idea of what type and how far we would be going. When they remove 50 rounds from each machine gun just to make the weight low enough to allow the big plane to take off on our 6,000 feet runway they are figuring the weight way too close. As it is, our pilot would use every bit of runway and then he may have to bounce the plane a couple of time to get her into the air. Every once in a while some poor crew didn’t make it and ran out of runway and crashed into the field. One gunner in another crew, Dick, took this sweating out a mission one step further. The night before a mission, he would go down to the operations office and see which crews and who was flying the next day. If neither one of two West Point graduates was scheduled to fly the next day, Dick would be all right with that, but if neither one of them was scheduled to fly, Dick would go on sick call for sure the next morning. If he had waited until after briefing, when he knew what the target for the day would be, then the medics would turn him down and send him back to fly. The medics had to know about Dick.